Frankie Edgar takes a dig at Jose Aldo's history of dropping out of fights
Ever since he got embroiled in a nasty war of words with Conor McGregor, former featherweight champion Jose Aldo has gotten much more vocal expressing his feelings about past and present opponents including Frankie Edgar, who he faces at UFC 200.
Throughout his UFC career, Aldo has always been a fairly respectful fighter without a bad word to say about anybody really, but it seems like the rivalry with McGregor brought out the best -- or worst -- in him lately.
Edgar doesn't get Aldo's recent rants, but then again he's become much more vocal as well while trying to land a fight with McGregor ever since he became champion.
It's just the Conor way.
"It's definitely out of character. I don't know if it's someone saying it for him or what, but it doesn't even make sense some of the stuff he's saying," Edgar told FOX Sports when speaking about Aldo. "He needs to think maybe about how it's coming out a little bit. He's calling Conor (McGregor) "soap hands", you can't say that about someone that knocked you out with one punch. It doesn't make sense to me.
"I think he's just following suit. We're all kind of following suit these days. Conor showed us the way."
All jokes aside, Edgar does hear some of the things that Aldo says about him, particularly when talking about their first fight from 2013.
In a media session back in April, Aldo found it laughable that Edgar suggested their initial meeting was a close decision and he even went as far as saying that he beat the former lightweight champion "only with my left arm".
While Edgar isn't trying to get into a war of words with Aldo, he does point out that rarely as the former featherweight champion ever fought injured because he's pulled out of fights on at least four separate occasions since joining the promotion in 2010.
"We were supposed to fight earlier and he had a little boo-boo on his foot from a motorcycle accident and we had to reschedule. I highly doubt he's ever fought injured," Edgar said. "If he did, he must fight injured all the time because how much does this guy pull out of fights?"
There were rumors that circulated earlier this week that Aldo was injured again during training although the Brazilian quickly squashed the story with a photo he posted while proclaiming his health ahead of UFC 200.
Of course, Aldo also claimed that he wasn't injured ahead of his first scheduled bout with McGregor in 2015 before he ultimately pulled out of the fight due to a rib injury.
For his part, Edgar is training and preparing for the best Aldo he's ever faced, but if the oft-injured former champion decides to pull out of their fight at UFC 200, he'll be ready for whoever the promotion hands him as a replacement.
"I'm just trying to focus on him but I won't be surprised if that happens, obviously," Edgar said about Aldo's tendency to get injured. "You're seeing it happen in every weight class, not just us, but especially with Aldo. Anything can happen.
"I'm just going to train hard for Aldo and if we need to make an adjustment, we can do it on the fly."
